A YOUNG Helensburgh flyer — whose father became the town’s Provost — lost his life in a World War One dogfight in northern France just weeks after becoming engaged.
Military
Rugby star died when ship torpedoed
A TALENTED rugby player whose parents lived in Helensburgh and who was selected by both Scotland and England lost his life early in World War One when his Royal Navy cruiser was torpedoed.
Surgeon James Henry Digby Watson was the son of Engineer Captain James Herbert Watson RN and his wife Eliza Viets Smith, of Westwood House, 17 Glasgow Street.
Villager torpedoed twice and lived
A GARELOCHHEAD villager was torpedoed twice in World War Two — and lived to tell both tales.
That was exactly what James Reeves did when Helensburgh Heritage Trust prepared a DVD in which local people recalled interesting memories of the war.
Volunteers became Garrison Artillery
SOME of the best-known figures in Helensburgh history shared something else apart from living locally.
The Rev. John Baird, father of John Logie Baird, John Honeyman, the architect, Dr Fordyce Messer of ‘disappearing coachman’ fame, and the Anderson family of Helensburgh benefactors all belonged to the same organisation.
Endurance after ship torpedoed
A HELENSBURGH man suffered the ordeal of being torpedoed and spending almost a fortnight in a lifeboat during World War Two.
MAEE tested Dambusters bombs
THURSDAY MAY 17 2018 was the 75th anniversary of a major event in World War Two which had very significant Helensburgh connections.
Cinemas throughout the UK showed the epic and moving 1955 film “The Dam Busters”, starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd, which recreated the true story of Operation Chastise when in 1943 the RAF’s 617 Squadron attacked the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams in Nazi Germany with Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb
Second village VC winner remembered
CARDROSS has the unusual — and possibly unique for a village — distinction of having been home to two winners of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry.
The better known of the two was Lieutenant John Reginald Noble Graham, who lived with his parents at Darleith in the village before and after World War One.